Amid a site-wide redesign that went live last week, IMDbPro, the Amazon company's subscription service for film and television professionals since 2002, launched a new set of tools aimed at the segments of the industry that perhaps use it the most: casting directors and actors.

With Pro Casting, casting directors can post casting notices directly in IMDbPro, filter submissions by specific criteria and create lists to organize actors they’d like to keep track of. Meanwhile, actors can update their Pro pages with headshots and demo reels and apply directly for roles by submitting their customized profiles.

The new toolset “is really just a natural extension of what our customers have already been doing and using on IMDbPro,” Jack Bernstein, head of IMDbPro, told me. “Robert Pattinson from the ‘Twilight’ films was actually discovered by the executives and casting team when they were doing an advance search on Pro … so we believe that launching [Pro] Casting was really just a natural extension of how customers were already using our service.”

“IMDbPro is probably the single most helpful tool in the tool box when I’m casting one of the leads in a movie,” said Richard Hicks, casting director of such films as “Gravity” and “Zero Dark Thirty” and president of the Casting Society of America, in one of several customer testimonials provided by IMDb. “There’s nothing better. It’s the encyclopedia of actors. It’s changed the way I do the job.”

IMDbPro’s latest enhancements were accompanied by price hikes for the service of up to 25 percent. An annual subscription will now cost $149.99, while the monthly rate is now $19.99. Subscriptions previously cost $124.95 per year or $15.95 per month. The new rates will go into effect on April 10.

Bernstein discussed the most recent changes that have been made to IMDbPro, how casting directors and actors alike can use the new tools, and why they’re worth the higher price.

Q: What kinds of casting tools have you layered on top of the existing IMDb Pro site?

A: Casting directors can now go in and post a breakdown that describes their project. They can list the specific roles that they are casting for and then publicly post that casting notice so that any Pro subscriber can view it and apply to that role. Once casting directors actually get submissions from Pro members, they can then filter those submissions by different criteria such as (IMDb's) STARmeter, performer skills (and) physical attributes in order to quickly narrow it down to the specific people that might actually be the right fit for the role. Also, when casting directors do create a role on Pro, we automatically provide them with matches of people that fit the profile that they’ve filled out.

Then when they’re reviewing either people that match their role or submissions, they can add those people to creative lists. Lists, we’ve heard through all our customer research, are extremely important for casting directors and is something that was a time-consuming element for them. They were keeping them offline and keeping multiple lists in multiple locations either in spreadsheets or in binders [for] tracking people that they would be interested in, pursuing for specific roles and having to share those with other filmmakers that they’ve been working with.

So now we actually streamlined that process. With just one click, casting directors can review their submissions or their automatic matches and add those people to creative lists. They can create as many lists as they want, and they can label them however they want: up-and-coming actors, people that would be a perfect fit for such a role, and so on. And then we also enable casting directors to now share these lists with both other Pro subscribers and other nonsubscribers—they can view the lists and provide input and feedback on lists.

The other functionality that we’ve launched is enhancing our search so that when casting directors are searching for actors and receive a list, they can again narrow it down by the specific criteria such as STARmeter or physical attributes or performer skills.

Q: How can actors use the new casting tools?

A: Casting directors have been actively using Pro now for years. They view an actor’s Pro page as the de facto industry resume, so we offer tools for our actor customers (to) update and enhance their Pro page in order to better promote themselves to casting directors. They can add additional information to their Pro page, such as their Guild affiliation, their training, different types of acting programs they’ve taken, performer skills, physical attributes that they want to call out. All that information will be displayed on their Pro profile page along with all of the information that we offer including their credit data.

Actors can also add photos to their page. Head shots are extremely important for actors, so as Pro members, they can add unlimited photos to their page, and they can change it as much as they want, and that’s all included in the base subscription fee for Pro, so there’s no incremental fees for that. We also enable actors to add demo reels. Demo reels are very important so that they can showcase their body of work. They can now add up to five demo reels to their page. And again there’s no additional cost for that; it’s all included in their Pro subscription.

So when they actually are viewing roles and casting notices on Pro, when they actually want to apply to a casting notice, they submit their Pro page to the casting director, and then the casting director will see a link to the actor’s page, and then they can go directly to the page and view all of the information I’ve described. And again, the actors can share their page with subscribers and nonsubscribers to help promote themselves.

Q: Has there been any discussion about expanding tool sets for other positions like assistant directors, cinematographers, or hair and makeup professionals?

A: Certainly we always continue to listen to our customers. While we can’t comment specifically about actual things we’re working on, we’re certainly listening to the feedback from our users and will continue to develop new functionality that will meet their needs.

Q: IMDbPro has also undergone a site redesign. What changes have been made?

A: The primary focus of the redesign was to make it easier for our customers to search and find the information most important to them. So we wanted to take the data that we knew that our customers were viewing and make it easy to find it immediately. One example is the contact information. If I go to an actor’s page and we have contact information available for them, it used to be we would display one piece of contact information on the main page, then the customer would have to click through to a second page to view the full list of contact information. Now we display all contact information for that person on the main details page.

Q: There’s also been a price increase for Pro. Why was that deemed appropriate at this time?

A: We’ve been continually working on new features and services for Pro, and as we continue to add value to the product including the casting features, the list functionality, the sharing functionality, we [are] also raising prices to correspond to the value that we’re adding.